This is going to be hard on Reid.... (4.00 / 3)

Reid soooo wants to please them and make them happy...

The fact that they hate this is 'cos it forces them to the table... if they want any say in the bill, they have to give a little, otherwise, reconciliation time!

I actually believe that there will be a 60 vote bill approved by the Senate that is acceptable to us, actually....  but, we won't get it without the threat of reconciliation to hold their feet to the fire...

Obama has told the Senate, "Listen, if you don't pass health care, you will end up like the senators did in 1994."  There will be nothing you can do to avoid it."

So, they are reluctantly going along...

Let them scream.  The fact that they are screaming shows that we are doing the right thing... If it was easy for them, they wouldn't be whining so loud...

They know, of course, that throwing tantrums works 'cos Democrats instinctively want to please them...  fortunately, Obama has learned that the only way to bring them to the table is by force...

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!

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by: lord_mike @ Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 06:30:41 AM UTC

Hold their breath (4.00 / 3)

Actually, they will try to drag out the Al Franken thing for more months.  And then fight it in the Senate.

They will try to invalidate the Alaska Senate election and get Ted Stevens, Mr. Innocent Crook, seated.  If that fails, a do-over special election will be called for by Sarah Palin.  If Stevens doesn't run, she will.

They will try to do something to exclude Bobby Byrd or one of the other aged Democrats.

They will try to expell Dodd and have Rell name a replacement.  Or even hold a special.

Ahnold will threaten all the girly men in his party.  Oops.  He bettere get busy.  David Vitter is looking forward to the discipline.

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by: David Kowalski @ Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 06:48:00 AM UTC

This is funny... (4.00 / 2)

From the CNN article on this:

"Senate Republicans said they worry the process effectively could silence any voice they have in negotiations since Democrats would not need their votes to move ahead with Obama's agenda. (The Democrats have 58 votes, including two independents, and Republicans have 41.)"

Umm.. right, isn't that the point of elections?  If Democrats win more seats in 2010 are we going to hear more complaints that Republican's voices have been "silenced" because they no longer have the ability to mount a filibuster without Democratic help?

This is just stupid... this is the whole point of the elections.  Americans chose to give Republicans exactly as much "voice" as they have now... and that's 41/100 seats.

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by: leshrac55 @ Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 08:22:05 AM UTC

HaHa (2.00 / 2)

The title of this article had my sides hurting from laughter. Ladder Ball

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by: lball @ Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 09:38:19 AM UTC

We Simply Have to Acknowledge (4.00 / 2)

that unless the filibuster is excluded, there will be no meaningful healthcare reform.  If the Republicans are given veto power, we will get at best a meaningless outcome like the bad Medicare Part D bill.

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by: bob h @ Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 10:30:49 AM UTC

What's depressing to me (0.00 / 0)

is to contemplate what I believe to be a near certainty: that the Democrats may indeed bypass any need to stop a filibuster, require only a majority vote, and still only pass a proposal compromised shamelessly toward corporate interests.

If they're going to require only simple majority votes in both houses, that really should render irrelevant most of the objections Democrats have made as to why they can't pass a very good health care proposal.

Indeed, it should make single payer a vastly more politically feasible option.

Certainly, we should use this move as a compelling argument to the Democrats to do the right thing, at long last.

But, cynic that I am, I know it will be pre-caved, even when it need not be caved at all. Because those are our self-indulgent, complacent Democrats, whose only real interest in life is to make their re-elections as trouble free as possible. And, in their eyes, the more they look to their voters like the Republicans who will run against them, the easier it is to convince the voters that they can't possibly be too liberal.  

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by: frankly0 @ Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 14:58:42 PM UTC

In short (0.00 / 0)

the Democrats might use bypassing the filibuster in two ways:

1. to fight corporate interests and pass the best possible package for the American people

2. to make absolutely sure that they get something, of whatever quality, passed in the name of health care reform, so that they can declare Mission Accomplished for their re-election campaigns

Which of the two do you think the Democrats will opt for?

Yes, this is a political IQ test.

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by: frankly0 @ Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 15:29:51 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Temporal Equality (0.00 / 0)

I think you make a very good point here.  

Declaring 'Mission Accomplished' (wouldn't it be great if they did an event in front of a hospital where they wear white coats and stethoscopes and drop down a "Mission Accomplished" banner?) might let them gain some advantage of "We got healthcare reform done" for 2010.  

But when the healthcare program they pass starts to fail and stink because it does not address root causes of the problem, there will be consequences in 2012 and 2014, if not for individual leaders in Congress, then for members of their party or those who can be associated with them.  

For Congressional/Senatorial Democrats, there is not temporal equality for the usefulness of shitty healthcare reform.  

And one thing that Congressional/Senatorial (and I might add Presidential) leadership of a party is supposed to do is to mitigate the short-termism of the people in their caucus; because the leaders have to look out for their power in the next sessions of the legislature.  This really is a Harry Reid and Dick Durbin production.  More so the latter.  

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by: Peter from WI @ Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 15:47:53 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Single Payer? (0.00 / 0)

I'm for it on principle.  I'm for it on policy.  I have absolutely zero qualms about single payer.  So let that be my introduction to a response to what you have to say, because I don't want to be accused of of not being for it.

There is absolutely no way that single payer will see the light of day in the Senate.  Unless Bernie Sanders knows some obscure parliamentary trick that others don't (I'm hoping that he does).

It's not (just) that the Democratic senators are pre-caving cowards, bad tacticians, or bought-off corporate stooges (and not all of them are, and I'm using broad, unforgiving generalizations).  It's that most of them are still in thrall to the ideas of marketist neoliberalism.  They just don't think that single payer is a good idea on policy or on principle.  

For them, it's less about the politics of it than about the political economy of it.  They don't think it's the thing to do, so they don't play around with it.

We need to get beyond the idea that we should elect good Democrats that we can work with to move them to do the right thing.  We need to elect people who are 'of' us and are running for office simply to indeed do the right things.

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by: Peter from WI @ Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 15:43:40 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Do I think that the Senate Democrats (0.00 / 0)

will indeed pass a single payer bill?

Of course not. I know my Democrats.

But what I want to see happen is for political pressure to be applied so that they have to explain to the American people and their own constituencies why it is that single payer is a bad idea.

You claim that they don't like the political economy of it. Maybe indeed that's the way they rationalize it in their own heads. But I think that the underlying dynamic, which they haven't the powers of introspection to observe, is that they have over their many years in Congress achieved a mind meld with the lobbyists from the health insurance industry so that they take as true by dogma the absurdities fed to them by that industry. (We have seen already the product of the like mind meld between Obama, his economic team, and the finance industry. They don't know where government stops and private corporations begin.)

I'd like to see these members of Congress have to answer to their constituents on the merits of the arguments regarding Medicare for All. Let them explain why it is that we can't economically adopt such a policy, given that Medicare is vastly more efficient (3% overhead) than private insurance (31% overhead).

While you may assert that they "really believe" single payer is a terrible idea, I think that the very way they treat it in policy discussions tells another story.

By both Obama and his complicit Democrats in the Congress, every effort seems to have been made to stop the voices of single payer from being heard.

Why such a blatant attempt at censorship?

I believe it's precisely because they instinctively grasp, and fear, the power of the idea. It's because they have no good answers, not because they have good ones, that they want to make sure the public isn't wondering why single payer is not under consideration.

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by: frankly0 @ Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 17:25:43 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Returning to my original point, (0.00 / 0)

there is a great virtue, from the standpoint of progressives, in having the health care vote being taken up in reconciliation.

It removes entirely from the repertoire of responses as to why Democrats aren't passing good, progressive legislation the standard one: the Republicans won't let us. It puts the onus entirely on the Democrats themselves to explain why they refuse to do so. They must now say, why, even on their principles, what we regard as good progressive legislation is impossible or wrong.

Single payer is such a potential piece of legislation.

What we should demand is an explanation out of the mouths of these Democrats as to why, even when the bar is set down to a simple majority required, they can't do the right thing here and pass single payer. If they believe it's not the right thing, let them offer their explanation.

I'm all ears.

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by: frankly0 @ Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 17:37:34 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

There's also the fact that (0.00 / 0)

less than 40% of the public wants a single-payer system.

Seems like a point worth mentioning.

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by: NR @ Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 19:42:26 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I imagine Enzi is talking about blowing up the Senate (4.00 / 1)

Meaning no unanimous consent for anything (other than national security), for the remainder of the Congress.  Stop all legislation in its tracks, and claim on TV that it's the only way they could react to a Senate D caucus that abused reconciliation and eliminated the filibuster.  Comparisons to the nuclear option would be pretty apt; the nuke option threatened to remove the filibuster for judicial nominations only; this would amount to removing the filibuster for any legislation the majority really really wants.

As a PR matter, this would be a tough fight.  Dems have a point on the importance and popularity of the underlying legislation, Rs generally have the point on process.  Avoiding the filibuster on health care and climate change pretty much amounts to avoiding the filibuster anytime going forward.  Which sounds nice now, but the filibuster was the only thing that saved us in the dark years of 2002-2006, and I'm quite confident there are some dark years ahead for this country yet.  This decade may have been the last hurrah of Embittered White Backlash, but I'm not ready to count on that yet.

We need to get Franken seated, and we need to really put the charm on Voinovich and Snowe.  Really we needed to beat Susan Collins.  But if we really put the screws on Snowe, we ought to be able to get her vote, which is all we need.

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by: texas dem @ Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 19:08:48 PM UTC

"War" Means They Will Steal the 2000 Election! (0.00 / 0)

First they steal a time machine.  Then they will go back in time and steal the 2000 election.

That will show us!

What?  They already stole the 2000 election?

Well, there you go then!

I hope you're happy!

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Apr 04, 2009 at 00:20:58 AM UTC